in the dirt since history began

Popular Demand

THE THING ABOUT VOLUNTARY RESPONSE SAMPLES is that you can’t draw conclusions about the population you are sampling from them with any measurable degree of certainty. The thing is, in a voluntary response sample, people with strong opinions tend to be overrepresented. See, I learned that in Statistics class.

It looks like 136.6 million Americans will have voted for president this election, based on 88 percent of the country’s precincts tallied and projections for absentee ballots … that would give 2008 a 64.1 percent turnout rate.

Seems to me like presidential elections are about the biggest voluntary response samples around. So the lopsided electoral college results and the ‘large’ margin of victory in the meaningless popular vote, (large being a difference of 6% points,) don’t necessarily demonstrate ‘broad support’ for president elect Obama. Though past presidents have claimed to have popular mandates on less.

Keep in mind at all times, not all of those 36% who didn’t turn out are apathetic with no sense of civic duty. Many feel disenchanted with or alienated (like me) from the political system ruling class.

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"We have no words to waste on you. When you reach out your vaunted strong hands for our palaces and purpled ease, we will show you what strength is. In roar of shell and shrapnel and in whine of machine-guns will our answer be couched. We will grind you revolutionists down under our heel, and we shall walk upon your faces. The world is ours, we are its lords, and ours it shall remain. As for the host of labor, it has been in the dirt since history began, and I read history aright. And in the dirt it shall remain so long as I and mine and those that come after us have the power. There is the word. It is the king of words—Power. Not God, not Mammon, but Power. Pour it over your tongue till it tingles with it. Power."